Uber Technologies Reports Q2 2026 Results: Full Earnings Call Transcript

Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER ) held its second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call. APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit to learn more.

View the webcast at Summary Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello and welcome to Uber's Q2 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session, and if you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star-1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Wong, Head of Investor Relations.

You may begin. Alex Wong, Head of Investor Relations Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to Uber's second quarter 2026 earnings presentation. On the call today we have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy.

During today's call we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. com. Certain statements in this presentation and on this call are forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today, as well as risks and uncertainties described in our most recent Form 10-K and in other filings made with the SEC. We published our quarterly earnings press release, prepared remarks and supplemental slides to our investor relations website earlier today.

We ask you to review those documents if you haven't already. We will open the call to questions following brief opening remarks from Dara. With that, let me hand it over to Dara. Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer Thanks, Alex.

So Q2 was another outstanding quarter for Uber with record audience and engagement driving durable growth, expanding margins and recording cash generation. And record cash generation. Gross Bookings grew 22% year on year to more than 58 billion, above the high end of our guidance and marking our fourth consecutive quarter above 20% growth. Just as importantly, that growth translated into significant operating leverage with non-GAAP EPS growing 35% year over year and trailing 12 month free cash flow exceeding 10 billion for the first time in our history.

Those results give us the ability to continue investing from a position of strength across our priorities. A recently announced agreement to acquire Delivery Guru is a great example. The combination is going to expand our reach to nearly 100 markets and extend the proven strategy that has underpinned our growth for years by roughly doubling the number of markets where we can offer the full power of our platform across Mobility and Delivery. By bringing our technology and Uber One to millions more people, we believe this deal will create significant long-term shareholder value.

We also continue to invest behind one of the largest opportunities in Uber's history: autonomous vehicles. Over the past year, the conversation around AVs has shifted from whether the technology can deliver a compelling service to how broadly, reliably and economically it can scale. That distinction matters because we believe that industry structure is becoming clearer. It mirrors what's happening in AI broadly.

A few years ago, many expected AI to converge around a single foundation model. Instead, multiple frontier models have emerged alongside a growing open-source ecosystem. We believe AVs, which are essentially physical AI, will follow a similar path. Just in the last week we've seen Nvidia release its alpha male open weight model and our partners at Wave received a permit in the UK and Zoox received approval to scale its robotaxi.

The momentum across our partner base is remarkable. Unlike foundation models, however, AVs are physical, regulated systems that have to be deployed market by market with the variable patterns of ride hailing. That makes the commercialization layer critical. And that's exactly the opportunity we're building towards.

Our ambition is straightforward: to become the world's leading commercialization platform for autonomous vehicles. Taken together, we're executing with discipline today while building the capabilities we believe will define Uber's next decade of growth. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions. OPERATOR Thank you.

Your first question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Brian Nowak, Analyst at Morgan Stanley Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe Dara, a double-pronged: one on autonomous, one on Mobility and Delivery.

You've made a lot of progress with different partnerships and there's a lot of technological progress happening. But maybe help us understand, if you look ahead 12 months from now, what are sort of the main milestones or progress sign points you're focused on, on your Mobility strategy and your Delivery strategy in AV, just to ensure you're going down the right path? Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer Yeah, absolutely, Brian. So in terms of what the milestones we're looking at, the most important milestones are really launches and the number of cities that we are live in, both with vehicle operators and then without vehicle operators.

So to remind you, we're live in seven cities and we're on track to be live in 15 cities by year end. We've got a Neuro Elucid launch coming in the Bay, we've got Zoox coming in Vegas, we've got Wave in London and Tokyo, Baidu also in London and then Pony and Burn in Zagreb and potentially more. So there's a bunch of launches coming up in the balance of the year and then really we're looking for more in 2027. So we'll continue to launch markets with the partners that I talked about, but we'll be adding additional partners into the ecosystem as well.

We expect to see Rivian in the market. And these are, you know, this is kind of a full stack, kind of a build, which is software and hardware with a very affordable bill of materials. We expect to be in perhaps San Francisco and Miami in 2028 for Rivian and then in Nvidia, we expect to be in LA and San Francisco in 2027 and then 28 different cities globally by 28 as well. So really what we're looking for is launches and markets, accelerating our data collect, which is really driving the newer kind of end-to-end models as well, and then starting to really commercialize this model.

The numbers are small at this point, but for us what we're looking at is first of all the quality of service and then second the utilization of these vehicles. And what we've seen is that launching with us as a partner with kind of the built-in kind of demand that we've got, we can drive very significant utilization per vehicle, often mid to high 20s, low 30s in terms of trips per vehicle per day, which is quite substantial in terms of the needed monetization as it relates to these vehicles. So it's getting partners in market, quality of service and then obviously the economics of the service that we're looking at.

On the Delivery side, we're also partnered with a number of partners, whether it's Serve or Cardigan for delivery kind of sidewalk robots. What I am increasingly optimistic about are the potential with drones. So we've got, for example, partnerships with Flytrax. There are a number of partnerships coming up in the drone area and the promise of drones.

While it will take time to get the economics down to kind of the kind of economics that can be sustainable with drone delivery with AVs, it's a really cool experience, it's safe, etc. But to some extent are slower than human drivers at this point, we'll see what happens there. Drone delivery can cut the, cut the timing of delivery significantly. So already kind of, you know, ordering dinner and getting it delivered to your home in 30 minutes is a magical experience.

We think in 15 minutes it's going to be, you know, 10 to 15 minutes is going to be an even more magical experience. So while we're on the sidewalks now as it relates to our Delivery business, we're looking forward to getting in the air with some of the partners out there. OPERATOR Next question please. Your next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Your line is open. Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs Thanks so much for taking the questions too. If I could, on the US Mobility acceleration, can you unpack a little bit some of the drivers of that acceleration and how much you think might be building permanent signal as opposed to elements of the World Cup that might have played a role in that? Then I was struck by the comment that the first-time user momentum was as high as it was.

What do you think you're putting in place there that's resulting in that type of first-time user momentum? And again, how should we be thinking about that sustaining going forward? Thanks so much. Balaji Krishnamurthy, Chief Financial Officer Thanks, Eric.

I'll take the question on US Mobility and Dara will take the second one. So the World Cup definitely was a benefit, but it was as expected to a large extent. And what I would say is the momentum that you're seeing in the US is consistent with the theme that we have been talking about since the beginning of the year and it is far broader than any one-off event that we're talking about here. So just as a reminder, what we have said is we expect the US to accelerate through this year and we know we highlighted in Q2 both trips and Gross Bookings accelerated.

We continue to hold our expectation for the remainder of the year. And what's driving that is three distinct items. The first one is insurance which we have talked about is becoming a tailwind this year. We are reinvesting the savings from insurance back into the market.

And particularly in California where there's a significant amount of reinvestment, we are seeing very clear inflection and growth. And in LA and SF our trip growth, for example, meaningfully outpaced the rest of the country. Then secondly, our product innovation velocity that we've talked about on both premium products and on affordable products, whether it's Reserve, UberX Pro and Black on the premium side or Wait and Save and other products on the other side of the spectrum, we are seeing really good traction there. Uber for Business in particular we saw 40% year on year growth.

Uber Health is growing even faster. So that's the second theme. And then finally sparse markets which we've been talking about as a long-term opportunity, that continues to be a very strong driver for growth as well. And just for context, in the US less than 10% of eligible consumers in our sparse markets have used Uber in the past 12 months, whereas in dense markets that number is over 50%.

So we're making really good progress there in improving supply, reliability and investing in marketing to drive awareness and trial. So I think all in, it's broad and sustainable. Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer And then in terms of first-time users, we're obviously very happy about the kind of record first-time users, at least over the past couple of years, coming into the platform. And the trends are actually, or the drivers are, similar.

S. as well. Globally, our low-cost products are kind of two-wheelers and three-wheelers. S.

it's Wait & Save, which allows consumers to kind of trade off time against price. Wait & Save is growing very, very quickly. So low cost, it kind of introduces a whole new sector of consumers onto the platform, and then we can upsell them to the mainline as well. That's one.

Second is exactly what Balaji talked about, which is sparse markets. The Mobility business and the Delivery business are growing significantly faster in sparse markets than in dense markets. We're kind of building out inventory in those markets. Margins are actually quite healthy as well.

So you get increased growth as well as strong margins as well. And you know, we are a very, very long way from high penetration in those sparse markets, as Balaji pointed out. Third for us is cross-platform. And, you know, most of our cross-platform activity has been historically our Rides to Eats.

Remind folks that only 20% of our consumers at this point use both Rides and Eats, and that's growing one and a half times faster than single-product users as well. So that's a very sustainable advantage that we have as it relates to cross-platform. And as our Eats business is getting bigger, not only is Rides moving consumers to Eats, but then our Eats business is moving consumers onto Rides as well. S.

as well. And then last but not least are new products that we're introducing into the marketplace. So, for example, Women Preferred is bringing a lot of women, both drivers and riders, into the marketplace. Uber Teens is another new product that's kind of bringing in a whole new demographic and audience into the marketplace.

And then, for example, higher-margin product like U4B gives us high margins but is also introducing kind of a new enterprise-type audience as well. So you put all that together, whether it's low cost, cross-platform, newer products, or sparse markets, that's really what's contributing to both the growth of the business as well as the growth of the audience? OPERATOR Next question, please. P.

Morgan. Your line is open. P. Morgan Great.

Thanks for taking the questions. You highlighted some softness in Brazil mobility trips. Could you just talk about the competitive environment there and then also if there are any other markets where you need to invest in Moto and low-cost mobility products? And then secondly, there's been a lot in the press recently regarding Uber's relationship with Waymo.

Is there anything you can add or clarify there and specifically how you're thinking about those Austin and Atlanta partnerships? Thank you. Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer Yeah, absolutely, Doug. So in Brazil, we are seeing a competitive environment.

Now, it's always been competitive as it relates to Mobility. We compete against DiDi, for example, locally, and Latin America generally has been quite competitive. What we're seeing that's new and different in Brazil is there is an enormous amount of competition as it relates to the food business. DiDi has introduced DiDi Food.

Meituan has gone in there, going against iFood, which is the incumbent in Brazil as well. All of them are going after two-wheeler delivery supply, and that same two-wheeler delivery supply will switch off between delivering food and also moving people as well. So the cost of securing that supply has gone up pretty significantly. And we're moving incentives that we kind of put on the consumer side, we're moving it to the delivery side to counteract that, if you will.

The good news as it relates to Brazil is that we continue to hold our share in Brazil, but you just see kind of share move from the Mobility side of the business to the Delivery side of the business because it's a period of time where there's a lot of investment going there. I think the good news, if you want to call it that, is our two-wheeler business is one of our newer businesses. The margins in that business are quite low. So it's certainly not hitting the bottom line.

But it is affecting trip volumes, and it's actually competition outside of our space that is affecting those trip volumes. As it relates to Waymo, listen, Waymo is a very, very important partner of ours, and we continue to operate in Austin and Atlanta. We believe we'll continue to operate next year in those marketplaces. It's a terrific product, and the on-the-ground partnership continues to be very strong.

At the same time, we want to make sure that we're not dependent on one partner, and we're absolutely seeing a plethora of newer players in the AV ecosystem, just like you see in the foundation model space. And while we continue to provide a great service with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta, we'll continue to build our services with our other players as well. We'll be in 15 markets by the end of the year. Next year it'll be many, many more markets than that.

And, you know, just as a reminder of our scale, AVs are doing kind of hundreds of thousands of trips per week. We're at 300 million kind of trips per week as well. 5% of our overall trip volume. You know, you compare that again to the foundation model space — people estimate that 20% of search now has gone to AI; 40% of users are using AI search one way or the other.

So the penetration of kind of physical AV is going to be slower. It's going to, to some extent, be more deliberate. It's way below where it is with AI. Regulations are a consideration there.

And, you know, we have time to develop the partnerships with our other set of partners to create a competitive playing field with attractive commercials. OPERATOR Next question, please. Your next question comes from John Colantuoni with Jefferies. Your line is open.

John Colantuoni, Analyst at Jefferies Great. Thanks for my questions. Can you talk to the evolving regulatory environment on autonomous vehicles and how you see policy playing into the pace of adoption and geographic expansion?